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THE MISSOURI TAVERN 

By Walter B. Stevens 



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PUBLISHED BY 

The State Historical Society of Missouri 

REPRINTED FROM 

The Missouri Historical Review 
Vol. XV, No. 2 (January, 1921) 

COLUMBIA, MISSOURI 
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THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 

By Walter B. Stevens. 

In the Missouri tavern the pioneer settler and the wandering 
stranger were first welcomed to our soil. In this early wayside inn 
business was transacted, religion preached, duels decided, politics 
discussed and frequently settled, towns founded, courts convened, and 
hospitality dispensed. It served as home and mart, court and forum. 
An institution which flourished in Missouri a century past, its ro- 
mance is still preserved in story and legend. The Missouri tavern 
is almost extinct. Conditions produced it that will never return. 
It was the product of a pioneer community, peopled by an honest, 
fearless, hospitable folk. Ratiocination was stranger to its walls, 
but common sense, wit and logic there found place. The author of 
^'The Missouri Tavern'^ has drawn aside the curtain of history and 
permitted us to share bread and board with our forefathers who made 
possible our heritage and who founded a *^free and independent 
republic, by the name of 'The State of Missouri.' " 

The Editor. 

It is told of the wife of the first Missouri editor that no 
one in need of food or shelter was turned away from her door. 
Mrs. Sarah Charless lived to be eighty-one years of age. Her 
home was in Missouri more than half a century. St. Louis 
was notably lacking in taverns when Joseph Charless came to 
start the first newspaper west of the Mississippi. Strangers, 
whose credentials or appearances justified, were made welcome 
at private houses not only in St. Louis but in the homes of 
Missouri pioneers generally. Thus, a hundred years ago, 
was begotten that spirit of hospitality which became a marked 
characteristic of the Missourian and which gave the Missouri 
tavern distinction. The trait was a natural evolution of 
two influential elements in the pioneer population — the 
French who were the first families of Missouri, and the Vir- 
ginians and Kentuckians who came in great numbers with 
the dawn of statehood. 

To accommodate newcomers Mr. and Mrs. Charless 
opened their house, which was a large one on Fifth and Market 

(241) 



242 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

streets. A sign swung from a post; it bore the announcement 
"Entertainment by Joseph Charless." With the house was 
a large garden, one of the finest in St. Louis, occupying half 
of the block bounded by Fifth, Market, Fourth and Walnut 
streets. Therein fruit and vegetables were grown for a 
table which became famous. In a card, Mr. Charless told 
through the Missouri Gazette that at his house strangers "will 
find every accommodation but whiskey." Mrs. Charless 
was one of seven women who, with two men, organized the 
first Presbyterian church in Missouri. 

Twelve years Joseph Charless edited and published that 
first Missouri newspaper. At the top of the title page of the 
Missouri Gazette, he printed in black type his slogan: — 
"Truth without Fear." And he lived up to it, defying Benton 
carrying a big stick and dodging bullets. Then he retired 
from journalism and devoted himself to the tavern with this 
announcement. 

JOSEPH CHARLESS 

informs the gentlemen who visit St. Louis, and travelers generally; 
that he has opened a house for their reception at the corner of 
Fifth street on the public square of St. Louis, where, by the mod- 
erate charges and attention to the comfort of his guests, he will 
endeavor to merit general approbation. 

Board and lodging per week $4.50 

Boarding only 3 . 50 

Do, less than a week, per meal 25 

Lodging per night in separate bed 25 

Where two occupy one bed 12 H 

The state paper of Missouri and Illinois will be taken at a fair 
discount. 

The Missouri tavern was of its own class. Identified 
with the vocation of tavernkeeping in Missouri's pioneer days 
are the names of some of the best known and most highly 
esteemed families in the state's history. Taverns were 
established for "accommodation" in the true sense of the 
word. Immigration came in successive high tides. In not a 
few cases, homes were opened as a matter of private "accom- 
modation" which led to public "entertainment," — as in the 



1 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 243 

case of the Charless family. About the wide fireplace the 
host and his family visited with the travelers. They listened 
to the latest news from the outside world and they gave the 
desired information about local conditions and advantages 
for settlement. Court sessions were held in the taverns. 
Counties and towns were organized and political caucuses 
were held in Missouri taverns. In brief, the Missouri tavern 
was the center of public life during those pioneer decades. In 
no other state does it appear from somewhat cursory investiga- 
tion that the tavern filled such an important part in early 
history. 

THE MISSOURI HOTEL. 

In a tavern, Missouri, the state, was born. The first 
legislature met in that hotel. The first governor, McNair, and 
the first lieutenant-governor, Ashley, were inaugurated there. 
The first United States senators. Barton and Benton, were 
elected there. 

In accordance with the fitness of things that tavern was 
called the Missouri. Begun in 1817 and finished two years 
later, the Missouri hotel was ready just in time for its place 
in the history of the state's making. Major Biddle became 
the owner. He went east and obtained the best landlord he 
could find and induce to come west. The Missouri was 
opened with equipment and appointments which made it for 
more than a generation the pride of the Mississippi Valley. 

The Missouri hotel was the scene of banquets and balls. 
There his admiring fellow citizens entertained Barton with a 
grand dinner when he came back from Washington after a 
speech which made him the great Missourian of that day. 
Benton was second fiddle. St. Patrick's days were celebrated 
at the Missouri, for newcomers from Ireland were among the 
foremost and most enterprising business men of St. Louis in 
that generation. Expeditions were planned at the Missouri. 
Principals and seconds met there to arrange meetings on 
Bloody Island. General William Henry Harrison, after- 
wards president, General Zachary Taylor, afterwards presi- 



244 



MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 



dent, and General Winfield Scott, who wanted to be but was 
not president, were entertained at the Missouri hotel. 

The oddest tavern in Missouri was not built with hands. 
It was a cave, forty feet wide and twenty feet high, in St. 
Charles county. Boatmen steered their pirogues and long- 
horns to the bank and took shelter in that cave from the driv- 
ing storms on the Missouri. They called it "The Tavern." 
On the walls, in those days, were to be seen the rudely carved 
names of many who had found refuge there and who had regis- 
tered. Drawings and carvings of birds and beasts, said to 
have been done by the Indians, were the mural decorations 
of this nature tavern. A stream of considerable size empties 
into the Missouri near this cave and at the present day is 
known as Tavern creek. 



VAN BIBBER S TAVERN. 

To Van Bibber's tavern at Loutre Lick came Colonel 
David Craig when he immigrated to Missouri in 1817. He 
brought with him two suits of black clothes. On Sunday 
morning, not long after his arrival, he put on the good clothes, 
after the Virginia custom of Sabbath observance, and went in 
to breakfast. The women folks crowded around and with 
much feminine curiosity examined the store clothes. One of 
the girls touched the clothes and exclaimed admiringly. "Oh! 
Ain't he nice!" The tavernkeeper, who either didn't favor 
so much style or wished to check further enthusiasm by his 
family, said, "Nice! He looks like a blacksnake that has just 
shed its skin." 

Van Bibber was somewhat of a philosopher. He believed 
in transmigration of souls, and carried out his theory in detail. 
Every 6,000 years was a complete cycle, according to his 
theory, and at the end of a cycle everything started over again. 
A party of Kentuckians stopped with Van Bibber one night, 
and as usual the tavernkeeper expounded his philosophy of 
transmigration. The Kentuckians listened with apparent 
interest and asked many questions. The discussion went on 
until bedtime. Van Bibber told his wife he believed he had 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 245 

converted the Kentuckians. In the morning the spokesman 
of the party said to the landlord : 

"We were much impressed with your argument last night. 
Believing there may be some truth in your doctrine, and being 
short of cash, we have decided to wait until we come around 
again at the end of 6,000 years and settle our bill." 

"No," said Van Bibber, "You are the same blamed rascals 
who were here 6,000 years ago and went away without paying 
your bills, and now you have to pay before you leave." 

When Long's expedition was on the way up the Missouri 
one hundred years ago to discover and map "The Great Ameri- 
can Desert" as it appeared in the geographies for two genera- 
tions, a stop was made at Van Bibber's. As usual the tavern- 
keeper had something to discuss. This time his information 
was in the realm of science. He told of startling occurrences 
in the vicinity of Loutre Lick. At the end of winter, or in 
unusually rainy seasons, according to Van Bibber, lights or 
balls of fire were seen apparently coming out of the ground. 
At other times large volumes of smoke arose from the soil. 
A son of Daniel Boone was one of the witnesses of these 
phenomena. Van Bibber told Long that two preachers riding 
late at night, about nine miles from Loutre Lick, saw a ball of 
fire at the end of a whip. In a short time another ball of 
fire appeared at the other end of the whip. Almost immed- 
iately the preachers, their horses and the objects around them 
seemed to be enveloped with "wreaths of flames." The 
preachers were so overcome with the spectacle that they 
couldn't tell more than this, Van Bibber said. The scientists 
with Long concluded that "combustion of a coal bed or de- 
composition of a mass of pyrites" must be the explanation of 
these strange things. They dismissed Van Bibber's stories 
of these strange happenings with so little interest that the 
tavernkeeper was disgusted. 

Van Bibber married a granddaughter of Daniel Boone. 
He had two sprightly daughters, Fanny and Matilda. His 
first tavern was of logs and as business developed Van Bibber 
added other cabins. Loutre Lick became the first Missouri 
spa. The earliest settlers went there for bodily ailments 



246 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

which were relieved by the waters. Later Loutre Lick became 
a widely known health resort. Benton visited there and told 
in Washington of the beneficial results. He advertised Loutre 
Lick so enthusiastically that Henry Cay referred in a speech 
to the Missouri senator's "Bethesda." Washington Irving, 
with his traveling companions, the Swiss count, M. de Por- 
tales, and the Englishman, Latrobe, stopped at Loutre Lick. 
He was so pleased with the surroundings that he told Van 
Bibber "When I get rich I am coming here to buy this place 
and build a nice residence here." But Irving spent so much 
time abroad that he never carried out his impulse to become 
a Missourian. 

Van Bibber prospered to the degree which called for 
better than log cabins. A carpenter, Cyranus Cox, and a 
blacksmith, MacFarland, stopped at Van Bibber's one day. 
The tavernkeeper persuaded them to stay and build him 
something more pretentious than the cabins. Cox was 
charmed with Fannie Van Bibber, W' hen the time approached 
for the wedding, carpenter and the girl decided that his clothes 
were too badly worn for the ceremony. Cox walked to St. 
Louis and bought a wedding suit. Matilda Van Bibber 
married James Estill, a pioneer Missouri merchant. As late 
as 1912, a great gathering of people, estimated at 2,000, 
assembled at Mineola, the modern name for Loutre Lick, and, 
under the auspices of the Old Trails association, discussed 
the possibility of preserving the Van Bibber tavern. To 
feed the multitude, forty sheep, one hundred chickens and 
several beeves were barbecued. Mrs. Mary Sharp, born in 
the tavern, was the guest of honor. Champ Clark told of the 
Missouri politics which had been associated with Van Bibber's 
tavern. 

MANN'S TAVERN. 

Mann's Tavern, in Bowling Green, was the scene of an 
historic incident which merits place in the history of Missouri 
duels. Judge Thomas J. C. Fagg told the story in his remini- 
scences which were published by the Pike County Neus 
twenty years ago. 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 247 

"Sometime in the twenties, possibly after 1825, two squads 
of travelers dismounted in front of the hotel. There being no other 
house of entertainment in the town, they were necessarily com- 
pelled to stop at the same place. They came from the same di- 
rection, all on horseback. The mystery deepened as the strangers 
hovered over the big log fire that blazed on the spacious hearth. 
It was a rainy, chilly day in November, and the two parties had 
evidently had a long ride from the west. Two separate groups 
of three gentlemen, what could it mean? The first three to enter 
the house finally approached the bar and called for something to 
drink. Then, in turn, the other three did the same thing. This 
was repeated before supper. The hot coffee and broiled venison, 
added to the whiskey, had a wonderfully softening influence upon 
the crowd. 

"As they returned to the barroom, one of the party felt called 
upon to make a brief speech. In substance he said they were 
about to relapse into a state of barbarism. No true gentleman 
ever drank by himself when there was another man standing 
by, who could enjoy the exhilarating draught with him. No two 
parties, no matter how bitter their feelings might be to each 
other, could afford to go up to the bar in separate squads and gulp 
down their liquor in silence and without an invitation to all to 
join. 'Boys, I move we all drink together.' The entire crowd 
responded by going up to the bar in a body. As they stood with 
glasses in hand, the same speaker said, 'Gentlemen, I have an- 
other proposition to make. Let us forgive and forget all past 
differences and drink to the good health and perpetual friendship 
of each other.' They touched their glasses and drank most heartily 
to the sentiment. As they set their glasses upon the counter, 
they grasped each others' hands with a pledge of undying friend- 
ship. 

"The mystery came out at last. A bitter personal quarrel 
was amicably adjusted as they took the last drink. The two 
parties had traveled from Fayette and Boonville in order to 
cross the river at this point to fight a duel on Sny island the next 
day. The party consisted of the two principals, each with his 
second and surgeon. Their object was to fight in Illinois so as 
to avoid the penalties imposed by the laws of this state against 
dueling. Instead of crossing the river in the morning to meet in 
deadly combat, the two principals, with their seconds and surgeons, 
journeyed back to their homes together, delighted with the out- 
come of the expedition. The parties consisted of Peyton R. Hay- 
den, of Boonville, and Charles French of Lexington, the two 
principals; and Abiel Leonard and Hamilton Gamble, the seconds. 
My impression is that neither Hayden nor French ever sought 



248 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

political honors, but both were eminent lawyers and highly gifted. 
It is barely possible that I may be mistaken as to Hayden being 
one of the principals, but as to the rest of the story there is no 
doubt. I give it substantially as Judge Leonard told it to me. 
The conclusion of his narrative was that 'it was the only instance 
in all his life that he had known any good to result from a drunken 
frolic' " 

A power to be reckoned with along the Missouri-Kansas 
border in the fifties was Uncle John who kept the Mimms 
hotel in Kansas City. Red Legs and Border Ruffians, Jay- 
hawkers and slave drivers, stopped with Uncle John. They 
were entertained impartially, and, strange to tell, the peace 
was preserved among these warring elements so long as they 
remained his guests at the Mimms hotel. Uncle John was 
an ordained minister of the Missionary Baptist church. He 
was from Kentucky, a fearless man, a character of that 
peculiar reserved force which made other men feel peaceful 
in his presence. 

THE MISSOURI AND THE FIRST LEGISLATURE. 

In the First General Assembly of Missouri there was a 
man who called himself "Ringtail Painter." His name was 
Palmer and his cabin home was in the Grand River valley. 
While the first Legislature was holding its sessions in the hotel, 
Palmer insisted on occupying the same bed with Governor 
McNair for one night so that, as he said, he could go back and 
tell his friends of Fishing river that he had "slept with the 
Governor of Missouri." 

This first meeting of the Legislature in the hotel was en- 
livened by one of the most unparliamentary scenes in the 
legislative history of Missouri. During a sitting of the senate, 
Duff Green and Andrew McGirk became involved in a hot 
argument. McGirk threw a pewter inkstand at Green. The 
two men started a fist fight. Governor McNair came forward 
to interfere. He caught hold of Green and was pulling him 
away when Palmer grabbed the governor and shouted: 
"Stand back governor; you are no more in a fight than any 
other man. I know that much law. I am at home in this 
business. Give it to him, Duff. Give it to him." 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 249 

Thomas H. Benton owed his first election to the Senate to 
tavern environment. His friends had been able to muster only 
a tie vote against the opposition. And one of Benton's votes 
was that of Daniel Ralls who lay in the last stages of fatal 
illness. Benton's friends won over one vote from the opposi- 
tion, giving the necessary majority if the dying man could be 
kept alive and brought in when the Legislature met on Mon- 
day. The fact that the Legislature was meeting in the hotel 
and that the dying man was in a room upstairs made the plans 
of Benton's friends practicable though desperate. The sick 
man was carried down stairs by four stout negro servants and 
voted for Benton. He died shortly after being taken back 
to his room. 

In 1835 the Missouri was still famous. Isaac Walker 
obtained possession of it and installed a tavern keeper in whom 
he had confidence. The result was so disappointing that 
Walker said publicly this man "was not fit to keep tavern; that 
his butter was so strong he could hang his hat on it." The 
tavernkeeper sued Walker for slander and employed Uriel 
Wright, the foremost orator at the Missouri bar in those days, 
to push the case. The old Missouri hotel stood until 1873 
and then gave way to a business structure. 

When St. Charles became the temporary capital of the 
new State of Missouri, the tavernkeepers made good their 
reputation for square dealing by furnishing the members of 
the General Assembly board at $2 50 a week. At that time 
pork was a cent and a half a pound; venison hams, twenty- 
five cents each; eggs, five cents a dozen; honey, five cents a 
gallon; but coffee cost a dollar a pound. 

Men who became prominent in affairs of the state and 
successful in business undertakings were numbered among the 
tavernkeepers. James H. Audrain, whose family name is 
borne by one of the Central Missouri counties, advertised in 
July, 1818, that he "had opened a house of entertainment 
fourteen miles west of St. Charles, at Peruque, on the road 
from Boone's Lick to Salt River, where he hopes from his 
unremitted attention to make travelers comfortable and to 
share a portion of the public patronage." 



250 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

In the Gazette of November 15, 1817, appeared this 
"Notice" over the name of Benjamin Emmons: 

"The subscriber gives information that he keeps pubHc 
entertainment at the village of St. Charles, in the house 
lately occupied for that purpose by N. Simonds, Esq., where 
the hungry and thirsty can be accommodated and the weary 
find rest." 

The popularity which Mr. Emmons achieved was well 
shown later in 1820, when his fellow citizens elected him a 
member of the convention which framed the first constitution 
of the State of Missouri. The selection of Mr. Emmons was 
the more notable in that he was the only delegate elected who 
favored some degree of restriction on slavery in the new state. 
Mr. Emmons had been president of the last territorial legisla- 
tive council. Later, after the organization of the state govern- 
ment, he was a member of the state senate, and notable for 
his independence of opinion. Descendants of this Benjamin 
Emmons have been in every one of the wars in which the 
United States has been engaged. Two of them, Charles 
Shepard Emmons and Wallis K. Emmons, were in the World 
war, serving in France. 

Duden, whose marvelous letters set Germany afire for 
migration to Missouri, told that on the south bank of the 
Missouri, opposite St. Charles "there lives a jolly Frenchman 
who manages the ferry, is postmaster and an innkeeper. His 
name is Chauvin; he was born in Canada. He told me that 
Prince Wuertemberg had spent the night with him some time 
ago." 

Duden was mistaken about the nativity of this tavern- 
keeper. Lafreniere J. Chauvin was a native of St. Louis. 
He bore the name of the leader of the first revolution for 
freedom on American soil, the revolt against Spanish domina- 
tion at New Orleans. The Chauvins came from France to 
New Orleans and thence to Ste. Genevieve and later were 
among the first families of St. Louis. Lafreniere J. Chauvin 
was of the second or third generation. He was born in St. 
Louis in 1794. A daughter of this Chauvin was the wife of 
one of the Emmons family of St. Charles. 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. . 251 

Charles Joseph Latrobe, an Englishman who accompanied 
Washington Irving in his travels through Missouri and who 
wrote the "Rambler in North America," told of the party 
stopping at the tavern opposite St. Charles, "where we found 
shelter for the night in a little French inn, which, with its odd, 
diminutive bowling green, skittle ground, garden plots, and 
arbors, reminded us more of the Old World than anything we 
had seen for many weeks." 

Judge Quarles, an uncle of Mark Twain, kept tavern in 
Paris. A guest came to the landlord with the request for a 
clean towel in the common washroom. "Sir," said the judge, 
with some show of reproof, "two hundred men have wiped on 
that towel and you are the first to complain." 

On the stage route from the Mississippi to the Missouri 
river, passing through Florida, was one of the historic taverns 
of Northeast Missouri. It was kept by William Nelson Penn, 
a Kentuckian by birth, who became a man of no small con- 
sequence in that part of the state. Mrs. Penn was one of 
those good Missouri women whose motherly instincts went far 
beyond her own household. The Penns were extensive land- 
owners. They rented some acres to a family less well to do. 
When an interesting event occurred in the renter's family, Mrs. 
Penn gave the baby clothes which had been her little daughter's 
and thus, when he came into the world, Mark Twain found a 
wardrobe awaiting him. Mr. Penn not only kept tavern, 
but was a merchant. He served in the Legislature, and later 
was, for eighteen years, one of the officers of Monroe County. 

An impressive structure for its generation was the 
Buchanan tavern in Florida. It was of brick and equipped 
on a scale of cost which befitted a community with strong 
hopes of being the county seat of one of the rich counties of 
Missouri. The time came when Florida and Paris engaged in a 
county seat contest, one of the most exciting in the history of 
the state. A compromise settlement was offered. It was 
proposed to make two counties out of Monroe with Paris and 
Florida as county seats. One of the Florida boomers was 
John Marshall Clemens, father of Mark Twain. The com- 
promise was defeated. Major Howell and Dr. Flannigan 



252 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

were members of the Legislature and both favorable to Paris. 
They got through the act cutting off a slice of Monroe county 
and adding it to Shelby. This reduced Monroe to the extent 
that it spoiled the argument for two counties. It also made 
Paris the more natural location for the county seat. This was 
a great victory for Paris but the people who were moved into 
Shelby long insisted that they belonged in Monroe. 

Housing the members of the general assembly for the 
first session held in Jefferson City was a problem. The new 
capitol was ready before the taverns were. John R. Musick, 
in his "Stories of Missouri," says that one man hung out his 
sign to entertain when all that he had, apparently, was a 
board structure with office in front and dining room and 
kitchen in the rear. There was no floor. A legislator applied 
for board and lodging. "Certainly," said the affable tavern 
keeper. "That is what I am here for. Plenty of good rooms 
and beds. I will give you Number 15." After supper the 
legislator said he would go to bed. The landlord picked up a 
candle, led the way outdoors and around back of the wooden 
building where there were several tents. In front of one of 
the tents was a piece of board stuck in the ground and painted 
"Number 15." Inside of the tent was a cot. 

Morgan B. White was sent by Callaway county to the 
Legislature in the thirties. He found lodgings in the house 
of a widow, who assigned him a bed with four high posts and 
heavy damask curtains. When it came time to go to bed, 
Uncle Morgan said he could not imagine how he was to get in. 
He had never seen that kind of a bed and he didn't want to 
ask questions. So he pulled a table and chair to the side of the 
bed, climbed over the top of the curtains. Instead of stopping 
when he reached the feathers, he went through and struck 
the floor. 

William G. Rice, who kept tavern on the Boone's Lick 
road in Montgomery county, had a scale of prices. Perhaps 
it might be said that he kept the first Missouri tavern on the 
European plan. His guests were informed that the price for 
dinner consisting of corn bread and "common fixins" was 
twenty- five cents. For wheat bread and "chicken fixins" the 



•-*»'^**«- 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 253 

charge was thirty-seven and one-half cents, or three bits 
according to the vernacular of that day. If the traveler 
wanted both kinds of "fixins" he paid sixty- two and one-half 
cents, or five bits. Rice was noted for precision and accuracy 
in his business. He became assessor of the county when 
there was quite a debt. He cleared off the debt and left a 
surplus in the treasury. Tradition has it that when he made 
his canvass of the county he rode a steer. 

The combination of tavern keeping and preaching was 
not uncommon. Rev. Andrew Monroe at one time kept a 
tavern near what is now Danville. This was the place where 
another preacher, a tenderfoot in Missouri, acquired the name 
of "Gourdhead" Prescott. He stopped at the tavern for 
dinner. There being no one else to take care of his horse, the 
minister went out to the barn. There he found a heap of 
gourds, common in Missouri in that day. The minister mis- 
took the gourds for a new kind of pumpkin, and gave a mess 
to the horse. Thereafter he was known as "Gourdhead" 
Prescott. 

Rev. Andrew Monroe was one of the first prohibitionists 
in Missouri. The governor of the state was a guest at the 
Monroe tavern and called for a stimulant. Waiving his own 
scruples out of consideration for his distinguished visitor, 
Preacher Monroe sent to the store for a bottle of whiskey. 
And thereby he created a precedent which conflicted with his 
strict enforcement of church rules. Sometime afterwards, 
Preacher Monroe met David Dryden carrying a jug, Dryden 
had settled in Montgomery county recently. He was a 
steward in the Methodist church. He had built a mill, a 
horse mill, an industry much needed. Altogether he was a 
man of affairs. But the parson was no respector of person 
when it came to church discipline. He eyed the suspicious 
looking package and asked: "Well, Brother Dryden, what 
is that you have in your jug?" To Dryden came in a flash 
the recollection of what he had heard of Tavernkeeper 
Monroe's experience with the governor, "It's some whiskey 
I have just purchased for the governor who is at my house." 
The preacher smiled and passed on. 



254 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

When Lafayette was entertained in St. Louis he was 
astonished to see approaching him an old man in the full 
uniform worn by the French at the surrender of Yorktown. 
He was delighted when the old soldier saluted stiffly but 
correctly. He was moved deeply when Alexander Bellissime 
identified himself as a native of Toulon who had come over 
with Lafayette's forces to fight for American independence. 
After the War of the Revolution Bellissime had settled 
in St. Louis and was conducting a tavern which was the 
popular resort of the river men. He was known to everybody 
as "Old Alexie." His tavern was on Second street near Myr- 
tle, in the French section. After Lafayette's departure, the 
veteran, who had been embraced publicly by his old com- 
mander, was in higher esteem than ever. He lived to be eighty- 
seven. On the red letter days of St. Louis "Old Alexie" 
did not fail to appear in that well preserved uniform and the 
three-cornered cockaded hat. When "Old Alexie" died, 
Captain Easton turned out the crack military company, the 
St. Louis Grays, and gave the veteran what would have 
been his heart's desire — a military funeral. 

Audubon, the world-famed naturalist, in his travels 
about Missouri in the early forties, was impressed with the 
abundance of natural food supplies, and with the cheapness 
of things eatable. He wrote to James Hall : 

"The markets here abound in all the good things of the land 
and of nature's creation. To give you an idea of this, read the 
following items: Grouse, two for a York shilling; three chickens 
for the same; turkeys, wild or tame, twenty-five cents; flour, 
two dollars a barrel; butter, six pence for the best; fresh and 
really good beef, three to four cents; veal, the same; pork, two 
cents; venison hams, large and dried, fifteen cents each; potatoes, 
ten cents a bushel; ducks, three for a shilUng; wild geese, ten 
cents each; canvasback ducks, a shilling a pair; vegetables for 
the asking as it were." 

In a land of such plenty, Audubon felt that the tavern 
rates were altogether too high. He complained: 

"And only think, in the midst of this abundance and 
cheapness, we are paying nine dollars a week at our hotel, 
the Glasgow; and at the Planters' we were asked ten dollars. 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 255 

We are at the Glasgow hotel, and will leave the day after 
tomorrow as it is too good for our purses." 

Criticism of the management of those pioneer hotels 
was attended with some risk. John Graves kept the first 
tavern in Chillicothe. He started "the tavern house" as 
he called it, so early in the history of the community that 
many consider hitn the founder of the city. Graves did the 
best he knew how, and he thought that was good enough. 
One day a commercial traveler grumbled about the cooking. 
Graves caught the critic by the collar jerked him out of his 
chair at the table and kicked him out the front door. 

"The blamed skunk," he said, "insulted my boarders 
and I won't stand for it. My boarders eat my fare and like 
it; and when a man makes fun of my grub, it is the same 
as saying they haven't sense enough to know good grub from 
bad. I am bound to protect my boarders." 

In the earliest days of the American colonies, the house 
of public entertainment was often known as "the ordinary." 
But when that term went out of use, Americans did not 
take kindly to the English name of "inn." "Tavern," of 
good full volume of vowel sound, was adopted, and it was 
applied almost universally in Missouri, outside of the prin- 
cipal centers of population, as settlement spread. When a 
Missouri community reached the metropolitan class, "tavern" 
gradually gave place to "hotel" or "house." But tavern 
continued to be the popular term along the rivers and the 
stagecoach routes. 

Upon a Missouri tavern was based one of the largest 
of the lottery enterprises which excited the American people 
about the time of the Civil war. The Patee house was the 
name. With two acres of ground adjoining it in the City 
of St. Joseph, this building, owned by John Patee, was dis- 
posed of by raffle in 1863. The property, which included 
all of the furniture and fixtures, was valued at $140,000. The 
tickets were two dollars. They bore the stipulation that 
$25,000 of the receipts from the sale of tickets would "be 
apportioned between those cities and towns in proportion to 
the number of tickets sold therein, the amount to be placed 



256 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

in the hands of the authorities for any benevolent object 
they may deem proper." 

Missouri hotel hospitality was almost the undoing of a 
President of the United States. President Andrew Johnson 
was escorted to St. Louis, September 8, 1866, by a fleet of 
thirty-six steamboats which met his party at Alton. With 
the President were General Grant, Admiral Farragut, Sec- 
retary of State Seward and General Hancock. Andrew John- 
son was the first President of the United States to visit 
Missouri. At the Lindell hotel a welcoming address was 
made by Mayor Thomas, and hospitality was extended. 
President Johnson responded. The speeches were made 
from the portico over the main entrance on Washington 
avenue. A reception followed in the drawing room, with more 
hospitality and another speech by the President. 

From the Lindell, the presidential party was taken to 
the Southern for more hospitality and more speechmaking. 
In the evening the banquet was given, with a menu that 
occupied half a column in the newspapers. President Johnson 
spoke again at considerable length. These St. Louis speeches 
were used by the House of Representatives in the prosecu- 
tion of the impeachment charges. L. L. Walbridge, who 
reported the speeches, was summoned to Washington to 
testify in the trial to the accuracy of the report. The speech 
which gave the most offense to the Republican party in 
Congress was the one delivered from the Walnut street 
front of the Southern shortly before the banquet. Stimulated 
by the hospitality of the day and by encouraging interrup- 
tions of the audience, the President used very bitter language 
referring to his controversy with Congress. It was at St. 
Louis that the President described his tour as "swinging round 
the circle." 

At Fayette was a tavern famous through two generations 
of Missourians. It was three stories high, a regular sky- 
scraper for its day. Behind the hotel was an immense barn. 
In front of the tavern was a large block provided especially 
for ladies arriving on horseback. The mounting block was 
a i>art of the equipment of most Missouri taverns. It had 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 257 

its place as indispensable, along with the swinging sign 
and the bell on the post. The rates at this Fayette tavern 
were fifty cents a day for man, and the same for beast. Negro 
hostlers were on duty day and night to take the horses to the 
barn. It was customary for the departing traveler to tip 
the hostler who brought around his horse. The tip was not 
a nickel, but a half dime. The bell on the post was rung when 
meals were ready. 

In the Missouri tavern advertisements of one hundred 
years ago hostler was spelled without the "h." Bowling's 
tavern, kept by one of the pioneers, at the north end of Main 
street in St. Louis, announced: 

"Every exertion will be made to furnisli his table, so as to 
render comfortable those that stop at his house. 

"His Bar is well supplied with the best of Liquors and an 
attentive keeper. His Stable is well supplied with provender 
and attended by a careful ostler. In short he will spare no ex- 
pense to please." 

Bar, Liquors and Stable were printed in large type. Tav- 
ern announcements constituted no small feature of the 
advertising columns of a century ago. William Montgomery 
advertised the opening of his tavern "at the sign of the spread 
eagle" in Jackson. 

"He has furnished himself with all kinds of liquors of the 
best quality. He has provided good ostlers, and his stables well 
furnished with hay, corn and oats. From his long acquaintance 
with business in his line, and his wish to please, he is induced to 
believe that no person wiill leave his house unsatisfied." 

The card of J. J. Dozier, of St. Charles, was a model of 
good taste. He told through the Missouri Gazette in 1818, 
that he had "commenced keeping a house of entertainment 
for travelers and all genteel and orderly company. He 
flatters himself from the accommodations his house will offer, 
with his strict attention and desire to please, to render all 
his guests general satisfaction. His charges will be as low 
as the country will afford ; he tenders his thanks to his former 
customers in this line of business, and hopes a continuance of 
their favors with a share of public patronage." 



258 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

Hampton Ball, one of the best known of Missouri stage 
drivers, recalled that James Huntington, a wealthy con- 
tractor, put $6,000 in an open drawer of the public room 
of a Missouri tavern and left it there until morning. 

"I told him," said Ball, "that it would be dangerous; 
that there might be some stranger, not a Missourlan, of 
course, who would steal the money." 

"You don't think any of the guests of this hotel, would 
be mean enough to steal do you?" Huntington said, in- 
credulously. 

Stagestand keepers, the tavern men were called where the 
stages made their regular stops. Hampton Ball said that 
"Kenner, of Paudingville, was one of the most famous. He 
could play a fiddle that would almost make the trees dance. 
He was jovial and generous and one of the most profane 
men I ever knew. He did not mean to be profane but he 
swore almost as readily as some people whistle. Although 
he ran a public house there was never any meal served at his 
table on which he did not ask the blessing. The great pioneer 
Methodist, Rev. Andrew Monroe, stopped at Kenner's house. 
The stagecoach driver suggested that Kenner ask Parson 
Monroe to say the blessing. 

"No," said Kenner, "I ask my own blessings at my own 
table." And he did. On another occasion, in a single breath, 
Kenner concluded the blessing thus, "And for all these 
blessings we thank Thee, O Lord, amen; kick that blamed 
dog out from under the table." 

Tavern keeping was honorable and tavernkeepers were 
honest in Missouri, as a rule. The exceptions were so not- 
able as to be long remembered. On the old Boone's Lick 
road where it ran through the northern part of Callaway, a 
man named Watson kept tavern. He made a great deal of 
money for a few years. Travelers could not understand why 
their horses seemed to fail in appetite when they put up at 
that tavern. After a long time it was discovered that the 
tavernkeeper rubbed grease in between the rows of kernels 
on the corn cobs to such an extent that the horses left much 
of the corn untouched. 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 259 

A fine representative of the type of Missouri landlords 
was "Weed" Marshall who furnished "entertainment" at 
Mayview for twenty-nine years. "Weed" was the familiar 
name by which the traveling public knew him. The proper 
initials were "J. W." Marshall was courteous to a punctilious 
degree, but it did not do to presume upon his good nature. 
A young traveling man left a call for three o'clock in the 
morning and in a rather unpleasant manner impressed the 
importance of it. Marshall had no night clerk and sat up 
to make sure that the guest did not miss the train. At three 
o'clock to the minute he pounded on the door. A grunt 
was the response. 

"Get up;" shouted Marshall. "It's three o'clock." 

"I've changed my mind," growled the traveling man. 
"I'm going to stay and take a later train." 

"No, you're not," said Marshall. "Confound you. You 
get up and get out this minute. You can't fool me." And 
the young man left on his early train. 

Marshall had been in the Confederate army. He was 
"with Shelby" and proud of it. When he retired from the 
Mayview tavern, the Kansas City Star told this: Traveling men 
found it entertaining to start a controversy as to the war 
record of Shelby's brigade just to arouse the ire of "Weed." 
One night a burly drummer, new in that territory, and under 
the prompting of other traveling men, started something. 
He began with a reference to the Civil War and his own 
alleged part in it. He said his command had met a body of 
Missouri Confederates under Shelby. 

"We not only made them run," he said, "but we cap- 
tured a lot of them. I captured one myself. And I made 
that fellow do all sorts of stunts. He was so scared he would 
do anything I told him. I made him roll on his back like a 
dog and bark when he wanted food; and lick the mud off 
my boots. Funny thing about it, Mr. Marshall, you some- 
how remind me of that man. You weren't ever with Shelby, 
were you?" 



260 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

"Yes sir. I was with Shelby. I was that very man you 
captured. I have been looking for you ever since. I made a 
vow then that if I ever met you, I'd kill you." 

With that, Marshall opened a drawer of his desk and 
pulled out a revolver. The big traveling man apologized 
hastily, said his war reminiscence was all a joke and that the 
other traveling men had put up the job on him. The honors 
of the hour were with Marshall. 

Far and wide in that part of Missouri the Mayview house 
of entertainment under Marshall was famed for immaculately 
clean beds and good living. 

When Zadock Woods built the first tavern in Lincoln 
county, one of the first houses in Troy, he enclosed not only 
the building but the spring with a high stockade, to afford 
protection for his guests, and the settlers, as well, from the 
Indians. 

The Missouri tavern was often the outpost of civiliza- 
tion. When Zadock Martin, in 1828, built the tavern on 
the bluff at the Falls of the Platte, his nearest neighbor was 
fifteen miles away. Landlord Martin used hewed logs for 
the main part of his tavern. He attached shed rooms so 
that he could accommodate quite a number of guests. The 
Martin tavern was on the main road to Fort Leavenworth. 
Martin was not lonesome. He had half a dozen sons and 
three handsome daughters. A retinue of slaves, well drilled, 
enabled him to enforce his rights. He was a man of com- 
manding presence, had flashing eyes, wore a broadbrimmed 
hat, carried a stout hickory cane and talked loudly. His 
word was law at the Falls, whether with officers or soldiers 
passing to or from the Fort, and also with the fishing parties 
which came to the Falls to carry away wagonloads of catfish 
and buffalo fish weighing from ten to seventy pounds. Martin 
raised large crops, had droves of hogs which ran wild and 
fattened on acorns and nuts. His herd of cattle wintered on 
the cane along the streams. Zadock Martin was the baron 
of the Falls. One of his boys attempted to play a joke on an 
Indian and got the worst of it. The Indian wanted sugar. 
Young Martin agreed to give him three pounds if the brave 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 261 

would promise to eat all of it. The sugar was weighed and 
the eating began. The Indian ate until he had swallowed 
about a pound. Then he wrapped up the rest in a fold of 
his blanket. "Hold on!" said Young Martin, "you promised 
to eat all of it. Stand to your bargain." "All right," said 
the Indian. "Me eat him all — maybe some to day — maybe 
some to morrow — maybe some one odder day, Injun no lie — 
me eat him all — good by." 

The Missouri tavernkeeper had his way of classifying 
his guests in pioneer days. The shibboleth was not of dress 
or speech so much as it was of taste. The tavernkeeper said 
to himself this man is a southerner and that man is a north- 
erner after the first meal. If the guest said he would take a 
glass of sweet milk, that showed he was from north of the 
Ohio river — from a New England or a Middle state. If 
the traveler called for sour milk, he was at once set down 
as from a southern state. In St. Louis sweet milk sold at 
twenty-five cents a gallon; sour milk, at eighteen and one- 
half cents a gallon. 

General Owens kept tavern in Fayette. He was a man 
of keen observation and wit. In his time Randolph county 
was the border line of Missouri settlement. The general 
said he could always tell his guests from Randolph by the 
color of their clothes. Randolph people wore jeans which 
were dyed with walnut bark. 

Colonel W. B. Royal, a Virginian and a highly educated 
man, kept one of the early taverns in Columbia. He added 
"Semper Paratus" to the customary wording of the swinging 
sign. Buck Lampton, of historic memory for his readiness 
of speech, told people that "Semper Paratus" stood for 
"Sweet Milk and Potatoes." 

It was customary to give the tavern the name of the 
owner or keeper, but occasionally originality was shpwn, as 
was the case of the first tavern built in Franklin, now Pacific. 
That tavern went by the name of "Buzzards' Roost." 

At the old tavern in Potosi, kept by Roberts, the charge 
was twenty-five cents a meal; or "dinner and whiskey, thirty- 
seven and one-half cents." An account book kept in 1824 



262 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

shows that most of the charges included the whiskey. Some- 
times the whiskey was sold by the pint and then it was twenty- 
five cents. 

Some of these Missouri taverns outlived the stage- 
coach. The old Ensign tavern, at Medill, in Clark county, 
was razed within the past half decade. It was once a popular 
stopping place on the road from Alexandria to Bloomington, 
by which the traveler journeyed from the Mississippi land- 
ing into the interior of Northeast Missouri. At Bloomington, 
Squire Abasalom Lewis kept tavern in what was the first 
house in that part of the state, with the chimneys inside of 
the walls. Squire Lewis came honestly by his judicial title. 
For years he entertained the judge and the lawyers and the 
clients during court sessions. A rule of the tavern, during 
this periodical congestion of patronage was that only the 
judge could have a bed with himself. From years of close 
association with his guests, Lewis came to have such familiarity 
with law and practice that he was prompted to run for justice 
of the peace. When a tavernkeeper went out for office he 
was generally successful, such was the esteem in which the 
vocation was held by Missouri constituencies. Squire Lewis 
was elected and proceeded to administer justice according 
to his previous observations. In one of his earlier cases he 
was called upon to to pass upon many objections raised by 
opposing counsel. With strict impartiality, the squire ruled 
in favor of the lawyers alternately. But at the end of the 
trial, two consecutive rulings were made in favor of the 
plaintiff. 

"Look here!" said the lawyer for the defense, "Squire, 
you decided for the other side last time, and this was our 
time to get the decision." 

"I know how I done," said the squire, with dignity. 
"In order to be fair to you fellows, I give half the pints 
to the plaintiff and half to the defendant, and never put one 
single pint for myself till the close of the case. And then you 
kick! Seems to me you don't appreciate fair treatment." 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 263 

Squire Lewis believed in upholding the dignity of his 
court. On one occasion he left the bench and whipped a 
lawyer for contempt. 

What happened at the old Glenn house in Paris furnished 
the ground for a church trial which agitated a large sec- 
tion of Missouri when the church was divided on the ques- 
tion of dancing. David Peavy, known from the Mississippi 
to the Missouri, was the first landlord, the tavern then con- 
sisting of a combination log and frame structure. His sign 
announced the usual "Entertainment for Man and Beast." 

There was the bell on the post in front of the tavern. When 
a traveler rode up on a horse. Uncle Davy went out to greet 
him, and rang the bell as if to call a stable boy. After the 
guest had gone inside, the landlord took the horse to the 
stable and attended to it. The ringing of the bell for a mythical 
stable boy was a harmless bluff. 

After Peavy, the tavern was kept by Anderson Woods, 
a Baptist preaJdher, and his wife Betsy. The dining room 
back of the hotel had been for years used for dancing parties. 
Preacher Woods suspended these parties. Aunt Betsy did 
not have the same scruples as her husband. When Mr. 
Woods went away to fill a preaching appointment. Aunt 
Betsy readily yielded to the pleas of the young people and 
gave permission for a dance. The preacher found a creek 
too high to cross. He came back when the fun was fast 
and furious, stood for a few moments looking in at the door 
and said: "I can see no harm in that." But the church 
authorities disagreed with him, preferred charges and brought 
him to trial. For some years after that there was no more 
dancing in the tavern dining room. During more than sixty 
years the Glenn house was the social center of Monroe county. 

W. M. Paxton attended court in November, 1839, at 
what is now St. Joseph but which was then Robidoux, named 
for the first settler. He stopped with Robidoux who kept 
tavern. He left this recollection of his entertainment: 

"His house was pearched on the hillside. It was of logs on a stone 
basement. I was shown to my bed on a plank frame in the base- 



264 



MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 



ment, and was given two blankets. I spread one blanket on the 
boards and covered with the other. 

"It was a cold blustery night and I nearly froze. In the morn- 
ing, before day, I heard Robidoux stirring in the room over- 
head, and I went up the rude ladder. I told him I had suffered 
with the cold. 'What,' said he, 'cold with two blankets?' I ex- 
plained how I had used the blankets. He replied with, contempt, 
'You haven't even got Indian sense, or you would have wrapped 
up in them.' 

"The old man built a roaring fire, and two prairie chickens 
and half a dozen ears of old corn on the cob were boiling in the 
pot. I made a hearty breakfast on these viands. Before court 
met, I took a survey of the future site of St. Joseph. I saw but 
two houses; that where I had spent the night and the store above 
the mouth of the creek. The Blacksnake hiUs were romantic. 
They seemed to be composed of red crumbling earth, with here 
and there tufts of grass. From the sides of the hiUs, at inter- 
vals, broke out oozing springs of pure water which gathered into 
a bold stream that coursed the prairie bottom to the river. In 
the rear of the house, on the hillside, stood four or five scaffolds, 
supported by poles. On these scaffolds lay the bodies of Robi- 
doux's children. His wives were Indians, and he buried his dead 
in Indian fashion. 

"Court was held in one room and the elevated porch. The 
docket was short. The most interesting cases were several in- 
dictments against Robidoux for gambUng. All the bar, except 
W. T. Wood, the circuit attorney, entered our names on the 
margin of the docket as for Robidoux. We got the old man clear on 
some quibble and he was happy. We charged him nothing, but 
he made all of us pay our tavern bills." 

In the collection of the State Historical Society of Mis- 
souri, at Columbia, is preserved the register of the City 
hotel at Boonville, for 1843 and 1844. Guests not only wrote 
their names and homes and destinations but enough infor- 
mation about themselves to make the book interesting reading. 
There was room for "remarks" and one man who must have 
arrived in a storm wrote after his Kentucky address, "Blanked 
poor weather for fools who have left the sunny South." The 
landlord, Edward B. McPherson, was an ardent politician 
and a frequent contributor to the comments on his register. 
On Sunday he would enter, "Let us all go to church." After 
one name the landlord wrote, "Left without paying his 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 265 

bill." McPherson was for Clay, aggressively so. He made 
many comments on the progress of the campaign and en- 
couraged his guests to write after their names "Clay and 
Frelinghuysen" or "Polk and Dallas," as they preferred. 
In a number of cases the guests told why they were for their 
favorite ticket, or offered wagers on the result. When the 
returns finally showed the defeat of Clay, his political idol. 
Landlord McPherson wrote on the register: 

"Snowstorn, Polk and Dallas, Oregon and Texas, Free Trade, 
War -mth Mexico and Great Britain, Hard Money, Relapse into 
Barbarism, but a Division of Property first." 

The signature of Thomas H. Benton appears a number 
of times on this register, which might seem rather remark- 
able in view of his antagonism to the outspoken politics of 
the Whig Landlord, but Secretary Shoemaker of the State 
Historical Society has ressurected the fact that when "the 
Magisterial," as Benton was sometimes called, was ques- 
tioned about the propriety of stopping with a Whig land- 
lord, he replied: "Sir, do you think Benton takes his politics 
into his belly?" When it was suggested that guests double 
up in time of congestion at a tavern, Benton's reply was, 
"Benton sleeps in the same bed with no other man." 

There were taverns in communities so strongly Whig 
that Benton would not put up at them. It is a tradition well 
preserved in Columbia that Benton rode through the uni- 
versity town and went out three miles to a small tavern in 
the country to pass the night, rather than accept better 
accommodations where the opposition was so strong. 

Realization of his waning hold came as a shock to Benton 
at a tavern during his losing campaign of 1849. Judge Fagg 
told the story in his graphic way. 

"Still clinging to the policy of driving everything by force, 
and unconscious of the fact that hundreds and thousands of his 
old friends and supporters were gradually falling away from him — 
that the slavery agitators were constantly alarming the slave- 
holders more and more as to the security of their property — he 
still believed that he had the power to maintain himself in the 
state. He started out again 'solitary and alone' in his private 



266 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

carriage, and, crossing the Missouri river at St. Charles, he took 
what he had been in the habit of calling in the early days, 'the Salt 
river trail.' He passed up through St. Charles and Lincoln coun- 
ties, scarcely meeting a solitary man that he could call his friend. 
Late in the evening he found himself at the village of Auburn. 
He recognized the place and remembered that more than twenty 
years previously he had been in the habit of stopping with his 
old friend, Daniel Draper. There was the same old, hewed log 
house. The same old signpost from which was suspended an 
old sign with the letters so faded that he read with difficulty, 
'Entertainment by D. Draper.' It was like an oasis in the desert. 
He had journeyed through an anti-Benton wilderness, but he 
would now be cheered and refreshed bj' the hearty greeting and 
cordial entertainment of his old friend. Stepping out of his car- 
riage and approaching the house he was met by the old landlord, 
tottering with age and looking at his visitor in a sort of listless, in- 
different way. He said, referring to himself as usual in the third 
person: 'You will have Colonel Benton with you to-night.' Still 
looking at his visitor, the old man replied in a voice that betrayed 
no emotion or surprise, 'Yes, I reckon so; all sorts of people stop 
here.' " 

James O. Broadhead used the same incident to illus- 
trate alike the independent spirit of the Missouri tavern- 
keeper of early days and the want of respect the Whigs 
had for Benton near the close of his career. He said that on 
the state road which ran through Auburn, in Lincoln county, 
old Daniel Draper kept tavern. Draper was a stalwart 
Whig and made no concealment of his political sentiments. 
Benton stopped in front of Draper's one day toward night 
and said, "Senator Benton wishes to stay all night with 
you." Draper was chopping wood. W'ithout looking up he 
said, "Get down and hitch your horse. We are not par- 
ticular about whom we entertain." 

Foreigners commented upon the independent character 
of the American tavernkeeper. When Lafayette made his 
triumphal tour of this country in 1824, his party stopped at 
fifty taverns. One who was of the party wrote: 

"We were received by the landlord with perfect civility but 
without the slightest shade of obsequiousness. The deportment 
of the innkeeper was manly, courteous, and even kind, but there 
was that in his air which sufficiently proved that both parties 
were expected to manifest the same qualities." 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 267 

Lieutenant Francis Hall, an Englishman, traveling in 
this country in 1817, said: 

"The innkeepers of America are, in most villages, what we 
call vulgarly, topping men — field officers of military or militia, 
with good farms attached to their taverns, so that they are apt 
to think what, perhaps, in a new settled country is not far wide 
of the truth, that travelers rather receive than confer a favor 
by being accommodated at their homes. The daughters officiate 
at tea and breakfast, and generally wait at dinner." 

James Stewart, a Scotchman, who wrote "Three Years 
in North America," devoting his attention to "a faithful 
and candid representation of the facts which the author 
observed and noted in the places where they presented them- 
selves" — those were his words — said: 

"We arrived in St. Louis on Sunday, the 25th of April, (1830) 
on so cold a morning that the first request I made on reaching the 
City hotel, in the upper part of the town, was for a fire which 
was immediately granted. The hotel turned out a very comfortable 
one. It contains a great deal of accommodation. The only in- 
convenience I felt arose from the people not being accustomed, as 
seems generally the ease in the western country, to place water 
basins and a towel in every bedroom. The system of washing 
at some place near the well is general, but the waiters or chamber- 
maids never refuse to bring everything to the bedroom that is 
desired. It is, however, so little the practice to bring a washing 
apparatus to the bedrooms that they are apt to forget a general 
direction regularly to do so. We had a great quantity of fine 
poultry at this house; and the table, upon the whole, was extremely 
well managed." 

Mellish, an English traveler, gave high praise to American 
taverns. He told of one place he visisted where there were 
sixty houses, of which seven were taverns. He described 
the breakfast table on which there were: "tablecloth, tea 
tray, teapot, milkpot, bowls, cups, sugar tongs, tea spoons, 
castors, plates, knives, forks, tea, sugar, cream, bread, butter, 
steak, eggs, cheese, potatoes, beets, salt, vinegar, pepper — 
all for twenty-five cents." 

In his "American Notes" and "Martin Chuzzlewit," 
Charles Dickens with his severe criticisms, rasped the pride 
of Americans and set this country by the ears after his visit 



268 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

in 1842. But Mr. Dickens was well pleased with his ex- 
perience at a famous Missouri hotel: 

"On the fourth day after leaving Louisville, we reached 
St. Louis. We went to a large hotel called the Planters' house, 
built like an English hospital, with long passages and bare walls, 
and skylights above the doors for free circulation of air. There 
were a great many boarders in it, and as many lights sparkled 
and glistened from the windows down into the street below when 
we drove up, as if it had been illuminated on some occasion for 
rejoicing. It is an excellent house and the proprietors have most 
bountiful notions of providing creature comforts. Dining alone 
with my wife in her own own room one day, I counted fourteen 
dishes upon the table at once." 

Almost contemporaneous with Missouri statehood was 
J. S. Halstead, of Breckenridge, who celebrated his one 
hundredth birthday in 1918; he had been eighty years a resi- 
dent of Missouri. In his younger days he was on close rela- 
tions with Henry Clay. He carried a cane presented to him 
by Clay who had received it as a gift from Senator Jenifer 
of Maryland. The cane had a history. The Maryland senator 
brought it from an olive tree near the burial place of Cicero. 
He gave it to Mr. Clay on the occasion of the latter's speech 
expounding the Missouri Compromise. One day a dog at- 
tacked Clay on the street in Washington. Defending him- 
self with his cane, Clay hit a fence and broke the cane. He 
tried to have it repaired but was dissatisfied with the result 
and passed the historic stick along to his young friend, 
Halstead. At the observance of his centennial, Mr. Hal- 
stead told a correspondent of the Kansas City Star this tavern 
story as he had it from Mr. Clay: 

An English nobleman traveling in the United States 
called upon Mr. Clay. He stopped at a tavern, having with 
him his valet. The tavernkeeper noticed that the valet 
seemed to keep at a distance but did not take into con- 
sideration any difference in station. When it came time to 
go to bed, the tavernkeeper showed milord and the valet 
to the same room. The nobleman protested. He said: 
"But I am not accustomed to being in the same room with 
my valet." 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 269 

"I can't help that," said the tavernkeeper. "It's there 
for you. You will have to make the best of it." 

When the Englishman got away from Lexington he 
wrote Mr. Clay a letter telling of his Kentucky tavern ex- 
perience and commented good naturedly on the democratic 
ideas of American tavernkeepers. 

He was a Missouri tavernkeeper who got the better of 
George G. Vest in a match of wits. The occasion was in old 
Georgetown, once the county seat of Pettis, where Vest, a 
young bachelor, lived at the tavern while he devoted his 
time to hunting and fishing and practising law. Judge Henry 
Lamm tells the story. 

"In 1854, Vest went back to Kentucky and married, bringing 
his wife to Georgetown. It is said that Vest had nettled his land- 
lord a Uttle by intimating it was unsafe to eat his pies without 
first pounding on the crust with a knife handle to scare out the 
cockroaches. Be that as it may, the said landlord, Captain Kidd, 
felt no occasion to be otherwise than frank, and, when Vest brought 
his bride to the house and took him to her for an introduction and 
proudly asked what he thought of her, Kidd repUed: 'By Guml 
George! You must have cotched her in a pinch for a husband.' " 

Hinkson creek, originally called something else, de- 
rived its name, according to E. W. Stephens, the historian 
of Boone county, from what befell Robert Hinkson, a tavern- 
keeper and one of the first settlers in that county. Hinkson 
had quite a herd of cattle. He started from home one morning 
in early winter to drive his cattle to the river bottom, in- 
tending to leave them there, as was the winter custom, to 
rough through till spring. When night came he stopped and 
camped on the bank of the stream. The next morning he 
drove out into the forest and kept the course as well as he 
could guess all day. At night he found himself on the 
identical spot where he had camped the previous night. 
The other settlers fastened the joke on Hinkson and made 
it a living tradition by giving the creek his name. 

There are towns of considerable population, and even 
cities, in Missouri, the beginnings of which were taverns. 
The first house built in what afterwards became Columbia 
was General Gentry's. It was of three rooms, two of which 



270 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

accommodated the young family. The third room was set 
apart for the traveling public. The next year General Gentry 
added a fourth room. His neighbors thought he was becoming 
extravagant. When General Gentry led his thousand mounted 
Missourians out of Columbia for the long journey to subdue 
the Seminoles, the march began from in front of the Gentry 
tavern where the farewell ceremony took place. The com- 
mand was drawn up and the flag made by the young ladies 
of Miss Wales' academy was presented with its stirring 
inscription : 

"Gird, gird for the conflict, 
Our banner wave high; 
For our country we live. 
For our country we die." 

Tavern keepers, with foresight as to coming settlement 
and as to prospective main traveled roads, located their 
houses of entertainment. When the Daughters of the Am- 
erican Revolution entered upon their patriotic work of plac- 
ing monuments to mark the Boone's Lick road from St. 
Louis, they found that many of the points of most historic 
interest were the sites of the pioneer taverns. In St. Charles 
county, Kenner's tavern shared with Daniel Boone's judg- 
ment tree the honor of a marker. In Warren county Rodger 
Taylor's tavern was one of the spots chosen. Saunder's 
tavern was another. In Montgomery county monuments 
were placed where stood Cross Keys tavern, Devault tavern 
and Van Bibber's tavern. Callaway county's section of 
the Boone's Lick road was marked at Drover's inn, and 
Grant stagestand. Among the Boone county sites selected 
were Vivion's stagestand and Van Horn's tavern. In Howard 
county Arnold's inn was commemorated. 

On the Grand Pass, in the thirties, when the stream of 
migration and commerce flowed strong along the Santa Fe 
trail, John and William Early, cousins of Bishop Early, of 
Kentucky, kept tavern. Grand Pass was a strip of high land 
between Salt Fork and the Missouri bottoms. Two bodies of 
water in the bottoms were known as Davis and Grand Pass 
lakes. 



1 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 271 

"The Washington Lewis Place," in Saline county, 
served as a tavern fifteen or twenty years. The tradition 
that a considerable quantity of whiskey was buried there is 
still current. Washington Lewis was one of three brothers 
who came out from Virginia about 1830, with a retinue of 
slaves and an abundance of household goods. The tavern 
was built of brick. A crack in one of the walls was said to 
have been caused by an earthquake in 1846. One of the 
first post offices in Central Missouri was in this tavern. In 
an upper room the pioneer Dr. Yancey had his office. 

Social standing of the tavernkeeper in Missouri was of 
the best. So it was in many other places. It is an historic 
fact that the first tavern in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was 
kept by a deacon of the church, who afterwards became the 
steward of Harvard college. Religious services were held 
in Missouri taverns before churches w^ere built and when 
bad weather interfered with the campmeeting custom. 
Not infrequently the Missouri tavern was conducted by a 
woman, usually a widow, and it was well kept. When John 
Smith T added another notch to his record of straight shoot- 
ings, he surrendered his deadly weapon to a woman who 
kept a tavern. The affair had taken place in the living room 
of the tavern. Coming into the room at the sound of the 
firing, this intrepid Missouri woman did not faint because 
of the prostrate figure on the floor, or of the pool of blood, or 
at the acrid smell of the powder smoke. She went up to John 
Smith T and coolly demanded the pistol. "Take it, my 
daughter," said Smith. 

An historic hotel in Kansas City was known variously 
as the Western, the American and the Gillis. It was built 
by Benoit Troost in 1849, and was on the river front, be- 
tween Delaware and Wyandotte streets. In two years, 
1856 and 1857, there were 27,000 arrivals at the hotel, which 
was enlarged by additions until it was an architectural 
curiosity. In May, 1856, this hotel was the hiding place of 
Governor A. H. Reeder, of Kansas, when he was a fugitive, 
trying to escape from the Missourians. Friends disguised 
the governor as a laborer and gave him an ax to carry. In this 

2 



272 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

way they got him out of the hotel and out of town. H. W. 
Chiles kept the hotel at that time. He was a strong pro- 
slavery man, and became the landlord of the Gillis house 
to save it from destruction. The property had been owned by 
the New England Emigrant Aid Society of Boston, and was 
intended to be operated to encourage migration of anti- 
slavery settlers to Kansas in order to make that a free state. 
It became known among Missourians as "The Free State 
hotel." As the border troubles increased, the Emigrant 
Aid Society, fearing that the property would be destroyed, 
put it in the hands of Chiles under a lease. 

Pro-slavery travelers made another historic hotel their 
stopping place in Kansas City. That was the Farmers' 
hotel, built in 1856 and run by E. N. McGee, a leader in the 
pro-slavery party. "The Wayside Inn" was the first name of 
this tavern. The location was on Sixteenth street, between 
the river landing and Westport. Overland stages started 
from the Gillis house. The purchase of the Gillis for the 
Boston people was made by S. C. Pomeroy, afterwards a 
United States senator from Kansas. Pomeroy came out with 
the first party of anti-slavery immigrants from New Eng- 
land. The colonizing of Kansas was planned on such a 
scale that it seemed to the leaders in the movement neces- 
sary to have headquarters in Kansas City. This invest- 
ment by the New Englanders, in 1854, had much to do with 
inflaming the Missourians, arousing them to the magni- 
tude of the Boston intentions. 

About the time that the New Englanders began coming 
in numbers to Kansas City, Thomas H. Benton and his son- 
in-law, John C. Fremont, arrived by boat and stopped at 
the hotel. They were on one of the strangest business enter- 
prises of that period. Among those who met the visitors 
and discussed the project with them was Dr. Johnston Ly- 
kins. The wife of Dr. Lykins, afterwards the wife of George 
C. Bingham, the Missouri artist, told this: 

"Benton and Fremont had arrived in order to complete 
arrangements for an experiment with camels as beasts of burden 
in crossing the plains during the hot season. Colonel Benton 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 273 

entered heartily into the plan and gave his assistance in every 
way possible. He thought that camels would stand the travel 
over the sandy plains better than oxen or horses. Owing to the 
shortness of the season in this northern latitude the project failed, 
although camels were imported for the purpose. Late in the 
evening Dr. Lykins returned to the house to inform me that he 
had invited the gentlemen to dine with us the following day. 
Colonel Benton and Mr. Fremont came, also Lieutenant Head, 
and the day was long to be remembered. The conversation was 
mainly upon the great possibilities of the West. At the conclusion 
of the dinner, we stepped out upon the porch, which commanded a 
delightful view of the river and surrounding country. Colonel 
Benton appeared in the height of good spirits and turning to me 
said: 'Mrs. Lykins, you will take a trip to California on one of 
the camels, won't you?' 

" 'Hardly,' I replied, laughing, 'I would prefer a more com- 
fortable mode of travel.' 

"The great statesman's face grew solemn. As if in a spirit 
of prophecy, he said: 'You are a very young woman, and you 
will live to see the day a railroad will cross the plains and mountains 
to the Pacific coast.' 

" 'Colonel Benton,' I replied, 'with all due reverence to you as 
a prophet, your prediction is as visionary as a trip to the moon.' 

" 'I will not live to see the prophecy verified, but the next 
generation will,' he responded firmly. That was the last visit of 
Colonel Benton to Kansas City. The party left by steamboat for 
St. Louis on the evening of the same day." 

The Gillis house, in the days when it was known as the 
American, was four and one-half stories in height, and had a 
cupola, or tower, in which was a bell. The ringing of the bell 
gave notice that the meals were ready. Guests sat at a 
table sixty feet long, accommodating sixty people. Three 
times that number were fed frequently, in relays. In one 
long room there were twenty beds. To take care of the 
overflows, the parlor floor was covered at night with shake- 
downs. 

Through two generations much Missouri history was made 
in the McCarty house of Jefferson City. John N. Edwards 
said of it : 

"What crowds it has seen and combinations, caucuses and 
conventions! Secesh, union, claybank, federal, confederate, radi- 
cal, democrat, liberal, republican, prohibition, tadpole, granger, 



274 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

greenback and female suffrage, have all had their delegates there 
who wrought, planned, perfected and went away declaring a new 
dispensation in the shape of a hotel, and that Burr McCarty was 
its annointed prophet. If that old house could think and write 
what a wonderful book it could publish of two generations of 
Missourians, the first generation ha\ing to do with the pioneers! 
The state knows it. And to the politicians of the state it has been 
a hill, a ra\T[ne, or a skirt of timber from behind which to perfect 
their ambushments. Its atmosphere is the atmosphere of a 
home circle. It has no barroom, and therein lies the benediction 
which follows the prayer." 

Burr Harrison McCarty, or "McCarty of the Mc- 
Cartys" as Judge Henry Lamm liked to call him, came to 
Missouri when the state was only fifteen years old. In- 
terested in stage lines with Thomas L. Price, Mr. McCarty 
built a fine home in Jefferson City in 1836. Of Virginia 
birth and a born host, he made his home such a favorite 
and popular place with Benton and Linn and the pioneer 
statesmen and lawyers, that he drifted into the hotel keeping, 
making additions from time to time to the old residence. 
He became the model Missouri host, with a friendly greet- 
ing to all comers. He set the pace for the landlords of a 
whole state with what one of his guests many years later called 
honest coffee, honest butter, honest eggs, corn bread baked 
in the skillet, poultry and game. From the McCarty house 
came the ways of making chicken dinners for which Missouri 
landlords gained fame far beyond the borders of the state. 
For more than half a century Burr Harrison McCarty made 
the McCarty house a Missouri institution. After his death, a 
daughter, whom a later generation of Missourians knew 
affectionately as "Miss Ella," maintained the traditions. 
When the doors closed there were Missourians in every part 
of the state who recalled the open wood fires, the scrupulous 
cleanliness, the old-fashioned cooking, and asked them- 
selves, as did Major Edwards, "why can't a landlord like 
him renew his youth and make that old house of his endure 
forever?" 

Barnum's hotel stew was a Missouri distinction in the 
forties and fifties. Every noted visitor — the Prince of Wales, 



THE MISSOURI TAVERN. 275 

who was to become King Edward, included — was made ac- 
quainted with this famous ragout. Thereupon Barnum was, 
in popular estimation, one of the most important citizens 
of St. Louis, ranking with the mayor on many occasions 
when guests were to be paid unusual honors. He was a 
Vermonter, coming to Missouri in 1840 with the reputation 
of being the newphew of the Barnum who had kept the 
best hotel in Baltimore about 1825. The wife of Theron 
Barnum was a Connecticut woman, Mary L. Chadwick, 
who helped her husband make their first hotel on Third and 
Vine streets so famous that St. Louis capitalists raised S200,000 
and built one of the most popular hotels west of the Alle- 
gheny mountains. George R. Taylor, George Collier, Joshua 
B. Brant and J. T. Swearingen were the men of means who 
headed the movement to build the hotel. Theron Barnum 
guarded jealously the recipe for that stew which made all 
visitors wonder. 

When "Dad" rang the dinner bell in the good old fash- 
ioned way, on the porch of a West Plains hotel one September 
noon, the guests who gathered about the long table, running 
the length of the dining room, counted fruit in eleven different 
forms before them. In the center was a pyramid of apples, 
peaches, pears and grapes. The fried chicken was in a setting 
of boiled apples. With the pork was a dish of fried apples. 
The dessert was the choice of apple dumpling or peach cobbler, 
or both. By way of relishes there were pickled peaches, plum 
butter and applejelly — eleven forms of fruit, and it was no 
extra occasion. 

In a reminiscent letter to the Saline county Index, pub- 
lished in 1900, Dr. Glenn C. Hardeman testified to the good 
fare and moderate charges of a famous Missouri tavern: 

"On my first visit to Saline, in 1840, I landed at Arrow Rock 
from a steamboat in the night, and, as I intended going to the 
country in the morning, I took lodging only at the hotel kept by that 
well known and popular citizen, Joseph Huston, Sr., for which I 
was charged the sum of twelve and one-half cents, or I should say 
a 'bit.' On my return in a few days, I dined at the same hotel and 
was charged another 'bit' for an excellent dinner. The currency 
of that day was exclusively Mexican or Spanish coin." 



276 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. 

One Missouri tavern has not only survived Missouri's 
first century of statehood, but, with the marking of historic 
trails and the promise of good roads to encourage leisurely 
motor travel, has entered on a new era of popularity. The 
fame of the tavern at Arrow Rock is growing rapidly with 
the tourist. Built of brick burned by slaves long before 
the Civil war, with wide fire places, with solid walnut wood 
finish, with antlers of Missouri elk. Arrow Rock tavern charms 
the visitor to-day. Patriotic women have added relics and 
draperies. What has been done at Arrow Rock with such 
popular approval, suggests the possibilities of the renaissance 
of the Missouri tavern to accommodate the travel by motor 
certain to develop with paved highways. 

V 



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